One day, our house grew tall arachnid legs and ran away with us in it. We held onto the nearest furniture for balance and speculated about the house’s driving force, but deep down, all three of us were relieved. We wouldn’t have to make any hard choices then. We wouldn’t have to break all we had built together over the last three years. It didn’t take us long to get our sea legs. Our house took us wherever it wanted to, and we three went along for the ride. Each day a room crumbled away, and a new one appeared. … Continue reading “Moving Parts” by Avra Margariti

psychic night your hands have never felt skin that thinks on its own; he intended to trick time, untick the clock, put his clavicle on your lips and you knew. when he reddened your neck by tracing its shape as if to pin a map for a land to conquer, you quivered. A flag waved, he knew. then slowly he entered with both a vow for something and a doubt somewhere— what’s missing and found, no one knew. so you stared at the blank wall as he did, spaced by warm sheets, wounded alone. Smokes warped and … Continue reading “Psychic Night” by Lorhenz Lacsa

Firstly, I should say this reading list is for readers who feel like outsiders. A wise person said, “People can make you feel like an outsider when you’re actually on the inside,” so feel free to heed as this reading list is not for to heal any wounds but to get your mind back into action and on the right track. Nonetheless, I believe there is no such thing as “the outside.” Some people don’t live by the status quo with can lead to a bit of social and cultural angst and loneliness. That is understandable. It’s not in all … Continue reading “Reading List for Outsiders” by Jordannah Elizabeth

The elephant in the room can’t breathe. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson sit around the dinner table with their two teenaged children. They talk, but only empty words drop from their mouths to rise above the clinking of cutlery. How was school? Fine. Pass the salt, please. Thank you. The next day, the elephant in the room has split down the middle, dividing like an amoeba into two identical pachyderms. One hangs from the light fixture while the other hides behind the cream curtains, pressed up against the dining-room bay windows. Every passer-by on Sycamore Street can see the elephant, but … Continue reading “The Elephants in the House” by Avra Margariti

They say about this land that the projectiles of the last war unearthed the projectiles of the one before. – Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross (trans. Margot Bettauer Dembo) But war, of course, consists not only of projectiles but of peripatetics: every legion of soldiers produces another of refugees. And few have been more sensitive to this facet of conflict than Seghers herself, whose 1944 novel Transit showed that ‘war’ is not merely ‘Hell’ but Purgatory also, not just ‘The End’ for the deployed but a ghastly intermediary for the displaced – whom it condemns to wander indefinitely, and to … Continue reading “First as Tragedy, Then as Tragedy: on Christian Petzold’s ‘Transit’” by Oscar Mardell

“’You’ve already been to my funeral. You’ve already laid flowers at my grave. What more can they do to me? I’m a shadow at high noon. I don’t exist.’The last time she met him he said something to her, casually, jokingly, but with heartbreak in his eyes. It made her blood freeze. ‘These days in Kashmir, you can be killed for surviving.’ In battle, Musa told Tilo, enemies can’t break your spirit, only friends can.” The Ministry of the Utmost Happiness Chapter 8: The Tenant (273) My curiosity always prompts me to investigate what other people are saying about the … Continue reading “Arundhati Roy’s ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’: The Worlding of Queer Lives Under Neoliberalism” by Mauve Perle Tahat

` I am tired of worrying my youth away, I am tired of being worried, I am tired You want to hold on to it, that certain lightness of being You said child, child: once it goes, never comes your way again ` Simone says “ain’t nobody perfect ’cause ain’t nobody free” Couldn’t be perfect, lightness forbid, could never be free I am tired of worrying my youth away, I am tired of being worried, I am tired ` Only have my words, warping the Eye turned toward the world Yearn to reach those masterful heights, paralyzed by victory … Continue reading “Anhedonis, Anhedonia” by Aïcha Martine

My mother grew up moving. The only place she has told me about is Dayton, Ohio. She grew up moving, orbiting Wright-Patterson Air Force base where her father, the colonel, was stationed off and on. She grew up orbiting, but people aren’t satellites, and she doesn’t bring up her past much. The only thing she has told me about her childhood was that she moved around, and one time when she was angry she tied her brother to a tree. I try to imagine this. My mother, who goes to church twice a week, who told me once … Continue reading “On Mothers and Daughters” by Rowan Aubrey Sloane

I. shards of a mirror floating downriver the future is a desert you have only what you bring with you I’ll give you one where ice is worth diamonds and honey worth more money is no good here the brazen serpent of the dollar sign has locked upon its tail and greed boundless eats the world II. gold may be deafening but cannot buy silence leave the silver to corpses’ eyes let no metal bind how many silver stars can you pluck from the sky what coin can outweigh the sun let no metal bind throw gold at time you’ll … Continue reading “KEY” by Raymond Gibson